12th Anniversary Special

Bangladesh is undergoing severe crises — political, economic and otherwise. The process of democracy has stalled and the pace of economic development slowed down. Worse still, the political incumbents refuse to accept the fact that they have been holding power without people’s consent that comes through genuinely inclusive elections and that the pace of economic development has practically decreased, which would have been significantly increased in a truly democratic dispensation…

DEMOCRACY is regarded as the hallmark of the present-age civilisation. In recent times, a mighty wave of democratisation has swept the developing and less developed countries. Analysts agree that in today’s world, democracy has no viable alternative…

THE Great Financial Crisis, the Occupy Wall Street rising, Wikileaks and Snowden exposure, imperialist interventions in Iraq, Libya and Syria, the economic and political developments in Greece, and the ongoing string of revelations in the US politics take away all ambiguities related to democracy, development and state…

THE ruling elite and their cohorts are now gloating over their success in ushering in massive development in the country. It is in that stride they have become the sole claimants of the glory of recent graduation of the country from ‘the least developed’ status…

THE discourse around the nature of the interface and interdependence between democracy and development, indeed, has a long history. This discourse featured prominently in the colonial period when aspirations about ‘democracy’ was seen as a powerful tool in the struggle for political freedom of the people of the colonies in their wars of independence against the colonial and neo-colonial masters…

While it is true that the series of industrial catastrophes in recent years have created a space for political action in the garment industry, it is equally true that without strong linkages among the various…

Politics and democracy are synonymous as are democracy and development. The proposition of politics without democracy arises when politicians lose confidence in democratic politics and a political party sets aside the democratic polity…

A meaningful economic development is impossible without democracy and we took lessons, in this regard, from the British colonial rule and Pakistani oppression. Keeping that experience in mind, we made a decision to categorise democracy as one important pillar with the three other pillars such as secularism, nationalism and socialism for running the state smoothly immediately after the independence, says Mujahidul Islam Selim…

What is frustrating is that successive governments including the current one have had policies and practice that have hindered true progress. If we can get rid of these barriers, we can introduce a democratic system which will enable us to bring about inclusive development for the cause of the people…

A meaningful development ensures people’s right to decide what kind of development they need and people decide how that development would come. Without democracy, people cannot decide what kind of development they need…